Travel Day 1157 – Hsipaw to Pankam Village, MYANMAR
After our long but exciting train ride across the Gokteik Viaduct yesterday, we were luckily still able to arrange a Palaung village hike…
Hike to the Palaung Hill Tribe Village
The popular guesthouse we were staying at in Hsipaw offered personalized guided hikes to the surrounding Shan or Palaung villages. These offers ranged from a half day walk through the fields up to a three-day hike to local villages with two nights spent in family houses. While I normally didn’t really like organized tours with a guide, here it seemed unfortunately imperative since no maps were available, the local families needed to be informed in case of overnight stays and none of the village people were able to communicate in English…
So at first I was debating to simply do some day hikes on my own and just explore the area around Hsipaw, but without a map this seemed to be quite difficult. Luckily I found two other travelers in the guesthouse who were in the same boat and so together we narrowed the options down to a guided two-day one-night hike to one of the Palaung minority villages. Pankam was the village called and as our soon-to-be guide pointed out, it was a very popular hike that was even recommended in the guide-book…
Children playing in Pankam Village
While the recommendations in the guide-book were usually not to be trusted fully, especially the latest Myanmar guide proved to be completely outdated or plain false, here we actually received exactly what we paid for with our crisp new 20 dollar bill. We had our personal guide for two days, three vegetarian meals, accommodation with a local family and even transport to the trail-head included. It almost seemed too good to be true, especially after some not so good experiences Nepal, but here even the guide turned out to be super friendly and cheerful…
The hike itself was a charm as well. The landscapes were marvelous and the tiny bamboo hut villages along the way amazingly beautiful. It seemed that every single village had a stilted Nat shrine somewhere and a very simple Buddhist monastery, which I obviously had to visit every time I spotted one. The only thing making our hike quite exhausting was the heat. Paired with the high humidity, our 5 hour uphill walk towards the Palaung hill tribe village became quite a sweaty one and we were more than happy when we finally arrived in Pankam Village…
Local Bamboo House in Pankam Village
After a little meet-and-greed with our Palaung family, we were then offered some tea, followed by a super delicious, home cooked vegetarian meal. After lunch the three girls who joined us for the hike up to Pankam, returned back to Hsipaw by motorcycle while we had the chance to rest a bit before we toured the village. Once we did walk around the fairly large bamboo hut village, we visited some other families, met some local Palaung women in their traditional clothing and played with some children in front of their houses. But best of all, we didn’t see any other foreigners…
Even after all the skepticism regarding joining a popular hike that was also recommended in the guide-book, to all our surprise this turned to be out as a really local experience. And it our case it turned out to be a really local Palaung experience where we even had the chance to end the day in the Buddhist monastery while listening to the young monks drumming while they were celebrating the full moon. It was simply a wonderful day in Myanmar…
Find all Hsipaw to Pankam Village photos here.
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